A.

Students and Setting:

Students:
There are 13 learners in the class, between the ages of 11 and 12. They have two fifty-minute
English lessons every week as part of their school curriculum, and one fifty-minute optional
English class entitled The Healthy Cup of English Tea. I have been teaching them for two years.
They use Snapshot (Brian Abbs, Ingrid Freebairn, Chris Barker, Longman) as their English
course book.
Besides their general classes, they are studying art disciplines (painting, drawing, art history,
and modeling), which turn them into visual, less verbal, but richly creative learners. They are
extremely enthusiastic about project working, devising innovative Kids Menus, Oracles,
European Language Portfolios, Adventure Brochures, and funny The Mummy Returns videos.
Their English-learning goals are high and keep them motivated: last year five of them took the
YLE Cambridge exam, while this year six of them have passed the KET Cambridge exam.

Setting:
Margareta Sterian Art Public School serves the artistic needs of 800 children coming from
the city of Buzau and the surrounding villages of Buzau County, situated in the south-east of
Romania. Our school is an art vocational school for children aged 6 to 19. There are three
educational levels: primary, secondary and upper-secondary. Starting from the primary level
children are taught to play a musical instrument, or they study painting, depending on their skills
and interests, then they continue with their favorite subject ( music or painting) in the secondary
level. For upper-secondary level there are four subjects or sections: architecture, painting,
drama and music.
Our students come from a variety of backgrounds with family living on limited income, mostly
with separated parents or, moreover, there are many students whose parents work abroad for
earning their living. Meanwhile, these children are left in the care of their grandparents or other
relatives. Since there are not supervised by parents, many of these children tend to misbehave
at school and register low standards.
We also have got a significant number of students with a Romani background. Romanian is
their native language, and they study English and French as second languages for 2 classes
per week in groups of 25 to 30 students.

B. Background:
At this elementary level the learners have been taught the past simple before, so this will be
revision for them and I will use the listening texts to provide a natural context for language. I
have decided to focus on the past simple, affirmative and interrogative forms, since I do not
have enough time in this 40 minute session to deal with the negative form, too, which will be
revised in a later lesson.
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C. Learning Objectives/Expected Results:

By the end of this lesson students will revise and provide controlled and free practice of the past
simple regular and irregular verbs, affirmative and interrogative. Additionally, they will practise
listening for general understanding and for detail

D. Materials and Sources:.

Past Simple Tense Handout

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets audio script
(http://thepensieve.org/hpchamberscript.pdf)
Film Tell Me About Your Last Vacation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5AlmrqEug
Handout with the ed pronunciation of the regular past verbs
Who is J. K. Rowling? handout
(http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=2316)
A crazy play - Andrew Wright, Creating Stories with Children, OUP, p.85)

E. Procedures / Timing:
Teacher does/says . . .

Students do/say . . .

Approximate time
needed

Tell students, I am very

tired. Can you guess why?

Try to guess why the teacher feels so. 3 mins

Revises the chant What did

you do last night? Divides
the class in two groups.

One group reads the questions and

the other half the answers.

5 mins

What did you do last night?

What did you do last night?
I went to the restaurant and had a
meal, thats what I did last night.
What did you eat at the restaurant?
When did you finish your meal?
I ate some fish and drank some wine,
and finished at half past three.
Who did you go to the restaurant
with?
Why didnt you go with me?
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MOOC Shaping the Way We Teach English. Copyright 2015 University of Oregon. All rights reserved.
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Because youre boring, dull and old,

and nearly 63.
Writes on the board and
Copy the title into their notebooks.
says the title of the lesson:
Telling a story.
Explains the learners what is Listen to the explanation.
a tall story a story in which
the information is so
exaggerated as to be
incredible.
Gives an example of a tall
story: Im very tired! Last
night I ran 20 miles and I
had curtains for breakfast.

5 mins

Asks learners to write their

one-sentence tall stories,
describing something which
happened to them that
morning. Sets a minimum of
3 sentences per group and a
time limit of 2 minutes.
Monitors learners to check
that they are completing the
task and help when
necessary.

In groups, write their one-sentence

tall stories, describing something
which happened to them that
morning.

5 mins

Corrects eventual mistakes

sensitively.

Learners read their one-sentence tall 5 mins

stories.

Invites learners to watch a

video with no sound. (Harry
Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=BfcfTmh8RKo)

2 mins
Watch and guess what the speakers
are saying.

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Asks them to guess what the

speakers are saying.
Invites learners to watch the Check for the general understanding 2 mins
video again with sound,
of the videos language.
check if they guessed
correctly and understand the
general meaning of the
videos language.
Gives the learners the films
audio script
(http://thepensieve.org/hpch
amberscript.pdf).
Invites learners to listen to a Watch and guess who the speakers
video with no image (the
are, what their age is and how they
screen is covered).
look like.
(Tell Me About Your Last
Vacation http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=2v5AlmrqEug)
Asks them to guess who the
speakers are, what their age
is and how they look like.

3 mins

Invites learners to watch the

video again with image
Asks learners to write down
the past simple verbs they
can hear in the video.

Check if they guessed correctly and 3 mins

understand the general meaning of
the video.
Write down the past simple verbs they
can hear in the video.

Asks learners to check their

answers in pairs.
Monitors learners to check
that they are completing the
task.

Check their answers in pairs.

2 mins

Asks the learners to work in

groups and write their

Write their examples in five

columns: /t/, /d/, /id/, irregular, and

5 mins

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MOOC Shaping the Way We Teach English. Copyright 2015 University of Oregon. All rights reserved.
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examples in five columns: /t/,

/d/, /id/, irregular, and
interrogative. Provides them
with handouts.
Sets a time limit of 3
minutes. Monitors learners to
check that they are
completing the task.
Elicits the past simple verbs
that the learners wrote.
Checks understanding of the
meaning/use of the past
simple.
Asks learners When did
these actions happen? Are
they finished? When did
they finish?

interrogative.

Asks learners to work in

groups and fill in the text
Who is J.K. Rowling?
(http://www.englishexercises.
org/makeagame/viewgame.a
sp?id=2316)
Gives them handouts of the
text. Sets a time limit of 4
minutes.
Monitors learners to check
that they are completing the
task.

Work in groups and fill in the text

4 mins
Who is J.K. Rowling?
(http://www.englishexercises.org/mak
eagame/viewgame.asp?id=2316)

Answer the questions When did

these actions happen? Are they
finished? When did they finish?

Asks learners to read and

Read and correct their answers.
correct their answers.
Put the past simple verbs in the five
Asks learners to put the past columns on the board.
simple verbs in the five
columns on the board.
Gives every child a strip of
paper. Tells them to write on
their strip of paper a onesentence tall story in the
past simple and remember it.
Sets a time limit of 3

1 min

Write on their strip of paper a one5 mins

sentence tall story in the past simple
and remember it.
Act according to the teachers
instructions.

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minutes.
When referring to the crowd of
Writes these words on the
people, all the class say the
board: king, queen, prince,
sentences they originally wrote.
princess, monster, crowd of
people. Tells the children
that he wants them to put on
a play and needs five
volunteers to take the parts
of the main characters.
Everybody else can be the
crowd of people. Explains
that a crowd of people is a
large group of people.
Collects the sentences from
the class and gives each
child some of them,
according to their part: king
(3), queen (4), prince (3),
princess (3), and monster
(3).
Tells the story, moving the
actors and indicating when
they should read a sentence.
When referring to the crowd
of people, all the class must
say the sentences they
originally wrote. (Andrew
Wright, Creating Stories with
Children, OUP, p.85)

F. Reflection - Week 2
This lesson uses the authentic materials of movie fragments and audio scripts while watching
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets audio script
(http://thepensieve.org/hpchamberscript.pdf)
and Tell Me About Your Last Vacation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5AlmrqEug.
Moreover, students worked in pairs and groups in order to complete the tasks of writing,
guessing and acting.

The lesson is appropriate to the age of 12/elementary level of students because using the past
simple tense is a requirement of the level. Additionally, the handout, story and movie selected
revolve around the level and age of the learners.
This is a program of the U.S. Department of State, administered by the University of Oregon.
MOOC Shaping the Way We Teach English. Copyright 2015 University of Oregon. All rights reserved.
Phase 1 Lesson Plan Template
Page 6

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State, administered by the University of Oregon.
MOOC Shaping the Way We Teach English. Copyright 2015 University of Oregon. All rights reserved.
Phase 1 Lesson Plan Template
Page 7